How to do communications in three steps | Brigadoon Weekend
How to do communications in three steps
One.
Ask "TAD" what questions to sort out your strategy:
Therefore what? What is happening in the culture?
Achieve what? What do you want to achieve?
Demand what? What do you want your audience to do?
Two.
Ask "WWWW" questions to sort out your audience(s):
Who? Who are they?
What? What do they do?
Where? Where do they hang out?
When? When do they engage and pay attention?
Three.
Execute the STOCK Framework:
Strategy: What are you setting out to win/achieve?
Tactics: What tools will you use to win/achieve?
Organization: Who and what do you need to win/achieve?
Consistency: What is the editorial calendar and cadence?
Know-how: What unique knowledge and insights will you share?
That's it.
Happy communications.
-Marc
Five to read
“This is going to change the world”: Dean Kamen presented his invention on Good Morning America. With great fanfare, an actual curtain raised to reveal a bulky two-wheeled scooter. “The Segway,” Kamen announced proudly. “That’s it?” Diane Sawyer asked. “That can’t be it.” The Segway flopped so badly that one of its first boosters still keeps his in the garage, “to remind me,” he said, “of my own fallibility.”
Slate
The tech billionaire who became the king of SPACs: Chamath Palihapitiya is a Silicon Valley staple. He's a tech billionaire, he owns the Golden State Warriors pro-basketball team, and he has a devoted online following. He’s also behind some of the biggest IPOs of the past year thanks to something called a SPAC. And while he didn’t invent SPACs, he's used them to forever change how companies go public.
Bloomberg
People are hiring out their faces to become deepfake-style marketing clones: AI-powered characters based on real people can star in thousands of videos and say anything, in any language.
MIT Technology Review
Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence: A Verge investigation shows how going exclusive stunted Rogan’s power.
The Verge
The cotton tote crisis: You can get cotton bags pretty much everywhere. How did an environmental solution become part of the problem?
NYT
Thanks for supporting Brigadoon. See you next week.
-Marc
Curation + commentary by Marc A. Ross | Founder + Chief Curator @ Brigadoon
Brigadoon is Global Street Smarts
More @ thebrigadoon.com
Focus group GIGO | Brigadoon Weekend
Focus group GIGO
GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out
Learn it. Know it. Live it.
GIGO is the computer science acronym that implies bad input will result in bad output.
Focus groups tend to lead to GIGO.
As you know, a focus group is a targeted group of consumers who are brought together for an in-depth discussion on a specific topic.
Businesses and organizations rely on focus groups to obtain feedback on their products and services or generally provide CYA material when new ideas have been exhausted and taking risks are pushed aside.
Seeing a focus group as garbage takes enlightenment.
Most problems don't require more data.
Most consumer needs don't require more data.
Most solutions won't be found with more data.
More insight, more innovation, and better eyes are required.
More cross-pollination, more adjacent possible, and better instincts are required.
Seth Godin states, 'It doesn't matter what people say. Watch what they do.
"Surveys that ask your customers about their preferences, their net promoter intent, their media habits–they're essentially useless compared to watching what people actually do when they have a chance."
Steve Jobs gets much credit for his design obsession and commitment to how a product looks and feels. But his greatest accomplishment was the way he designed his business for ongoing success and innovation.
Jobs believed you could change commerce and culture through multiyear planning and execution, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others' successes.
During a Kara Swisher interview at the 2019 SALT Conference, Scooter Braun made the case that you need to trust your gut and dump the data.
Braun is the founder of entertainment and media company SB Projects and represents most notably Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Kanye West, and Usher.
He makes the case that the ability to pivot and take advantage of a situation is most important to success.
Not business plans. Not data. Not focus groups.
Braun told the audience, "part of being successful is having moments where you are doing the unreasonable thing. Greatness never came from doing the reasonable thing. It is doing the unreasonable thing, the thing that no one else sees."
Braun's industry is awash in data, but at the start, you need to trust your instinct and make a decision to start.
Most data can only tell what is working and what is successful, not what will work and what will be successful - that's instinct and execution.
In a commercial world where there is so much content and so much choice, many are looking to friends and influencers to curate and guide purchasing.
In a commercial world with no barriers coupled with the cheapness to start a business, more data isn't going to help you.
Getting into the marketplace and engaging customers is going to help you.
-Marc
Five to read
Whole milk mounts its triumphant comeback: “Hot girls are ditching the alternatives and are going back to basics.”
GrubStreet
Florida is America's future: Old, southern, and retired: Why we should be concerned that the fastest-growing cities in the US are retirement villages in the South.
Allison Schrager
The case for optimism
Kevin Kelly
How little targets helped Reza Pakravan cope with the pandemic: Reza Pakravan decided to change his entire life around, leaving finance to become an explorer and TV producer. With travel hard and insurance impossible to come by, we spoke to the globetrotting Pakravan about how he’s keeping sane at home.
GQ
On thinking like a copywriter: A new book by copywriter and lecturer Andrew Boulton offers a series of tips on how to think like a copywriter, and as a result, write better copy. We extract the book here.
Creative Review
Thanks for supporting Brigadoon. See you next week.
-Marc
Curation + commentary by Marc A. Ross | Founder + Chief Curator @ Brigadoon
Brigadoon is Global Street Smarts
More @ thebrigadoon.com
Scott Jurek is attempting an FKT on the AT, again
This time the former AT record holder is heading southbound and shooting for a time of under 40 days.
Outside
